My interest in anime and manga and such first began when I started watching Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network many a year ago. As my older sister really liked it, I inevitably got dragged into it as well. Despite watching quite masculine anime's, such as Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing, when it came to manga, one of the first ones I ever bought was a very girly (shojo) manga callled Cardcaptor Sakura!
I think the Americanised TV series entitled 'Cardcaptors' was out on the telly at the time, but the beautiful artwork in the manga just blew the dubbed animated series out of the water! (Although I eventually bought a few episodes of the original Japanese version, and found these to be very sweet!)
But yes, this was the start of my love of manga and consequently the all-girl drawing team, CLAMP (the creators of numerous manga titles including Cardcaptor Sakura)!
I love their decorative drawing style (bursts of flowers occurring behind characters on every other page), attention to detail on characters clothing, ability to go from serious to light-hearted, and their sweet and engaging storylines.
Cardcaptor Sakura is my favourite manga that they did...
But I do have others! Such as Chobits (2001-2002)...
This was a bit more of a raunchy affair (in some parts) from the CLAMP girls and all together more grown up and thoughtful than their other works, with the storyline attempting to tackle the complex problem of "love" between human and machine (not as pervy as it sounds)! I particularly like the change in inking style compared to that used in CCS - the lines have more fluidity about them which gives the artwork a sense of spontaneity... and I likes me some of that!
And theres Angelic Layer (1999-2001)...
This story was more aimed at children, hence it had a lot more comedic scenarios in it than in most CLAMP novels I've read - I enjoyed how the style of drawing would completely change depending on the tone of the scene.
And there is Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles (2003-2009)...
This is probably CLAMP's most epic manga series, the story completed after a whopping 28 novels! (I'm ashamed to say I didn't even make it to 10)! But still, I was pretty darn excited about this series as we said hello again to characters from a variety of CLAMP's other works (the CLAMP universe); the two main characters being Sakura and Syoran Li from CCS (I was a rather massive fangirl of the pairing back in the day...and still kind of am...they're just so darn cute)!
And what made it more interesting was that this series was drawn alongside another manga series, in which the two stories would ocassionally join togther - encouraging a reader to buy both sets of manga to get the most out of the two stories. Thats clever marketing, I tell ya! xxxHolic (2003-2011) was about a mystical alcohol-loving lady and a young man solving all sorts of spooky and unnatural happenings in the area. It was pretty good, but again I was not loyal to the series and stopped reading after a few books... I'm sorry!
And oh, there are so many other CLAMP works too! But they're just a few of the mangas I enjoyed in my youth, here are a couple of others I liked too: Fushigi Yuugi, Marmalade Boy, Dragonball, Magic Knight Rayearth, Imadoki, Love Hina (oh, thats such a funny manga! I'd totally forgotten how much me and my sister used to love it)! So there we go. Self-indulgent manga waffles complete. I think I may have to go back and take a gander at some of those books again.
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